rshot: My Bipolar Family A Memoir by David Lovelace292 pages
Completed 1/10/10
The cover of this book is what drew me in - it looked humorous, and with my own family history of (somewhat comical) mental illness, my interest was piqued. Ugh. I should have skipped this one. It took me far too long to complete, just because it was so boring. While the story started out well enough - Dave Lovelace's father is completely manic and has left his wife to fend for herself having fallen into a stupor for days - but soon progressed to monotonous, not-very interesting life stories. While Lovelace suffers from bipolar disorder, I feel like the second third of the book was instead about his travels - which, yes, would affect his disease, but instead it just droned on and on. His introduction with his future wife was unclear; in fact, most of this book seemed like a shoddy piecing together of random tidbits of Lovelace's life. As for the last third of the book, it had all to do with the disease, and in much to serious of a way, if you ask me. I picked up this book for some lighthearted humor regarding a serious subject; instead I felt that I had read a self-help guide to hard times. I felt no empathy for his family, and found myself bothered by the fact that he seemed to place them below himself. For a family memoir, this was definitely lacking.
I've recently read (bipolar bare) by Carlton Davis, which is a memoir about living with bipolar disorder I think you'll find much more interesting and thought-provoking. The author is VERy candid about his struggle with mental illness and his struggle to come to terms with it -- including intimate details about sexual deviations and drug use (those are particular to the disease, which you may know, especially after reading "Scattershot"). the sex in the book is "in your face" and out there -- but it shows the wild forces that drugs and mania unleash in the mentally ill. (I have a friend who used to be a psych nurse -- her stories about the sex stuff are incredible.) And the book is hopeful, in the end, because he regards being bipolar as a gift from God.
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